How the Green Bicycle Project is transforming Lives

For David Gitonga, a student in a high school in Ishiara in Mbeere, the daily journey to school felt a lot like torture, since he has to walk 10 kilometers through uninhabited countryside. Returning home in the evening was equally a slog of hard labour to the young soul of St. Thomas Igwabiti Secondary School

But now Gitonga, and hundreds of others like him across the country, will be riding comfortably to class, thanks to a unique bicycle donation scheme all the way from Japan. “I am very happy that now I will be arriving at school earlier and have more time to study, ” he says smiling

Gitomga is one of beneficiaries of the “Green Bicycle” project that is being run by environmentalist Dr. Isaac Kalua, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Green Africa Foundation. "I used to reach home from school when it was very dark. It was very unsafe for me as a girl. But now i can reach much earlier with the bicycle," says Jackline Wareri of the same school.

Kalua explains that his project is not just another straight forward scheme of donating bicycles to needy people, but a plan to save the rapidly-deteriorating environment. “The beneficiaries don’t just take the bicycles, say thank you and ride off. Instead, they are trained to become environmental ambassadors who do work to give the environment a big boost,” he says while launching the distribution of the second shipment of 460 bicycles from Japan recently in Ishiara.

Environmental ambassadors have to plant and nurture trees in their homes and schools and also encourage their community to embrace environmental principles in their daily lives. According to Green Africa Project coordinator, Daisy Mumbi, the beneficiaries of the bicycles are also trained on issues of climate change, water harvesting and other environmental issues

“We seek to make our ambassadors to think green and act green in all their lives and to encourage other members of the community to be the same,” she says. But students like Gitonga don’t actually own the bicycle; they will leave it in school once they finish their final examination for it to be “inherited” by other needy students.

“We hope that through this arrangement many trees will be planted across the country and turn Kenya green,” adds Kalua, who is also involved in a project to produce environmentally-friendly bio-diesel from the Jatropha Curcas trees. So far, the “Green Bicycle Project” has distributed close to 900 green bicycles across the country since it was launched last year. More bicycle shipments are expected in the near future.

“Transport in rural areas is a big problem. But so is environmental degradation. So we have chose to kill two birds with one stone,” says Kalua. Kalua hopes that his initiative will contribute in helping Kenya achieve its target of reaching 10% forest cover. Currently, Kenya survives precariously on 2% forest cover.

This require 6.4 billion trees to be planted across the country, meaning that 40 million Kenyans will have to plant two trees every month for the next 12 years to reach the target. “This is an innovative way of getting people to plant trees and I hope it will expand further an help to combat climate change, ” says the Japanese Ambassador Shigeo Iwatani

Environmental experts are in agreement that climate change will hit Kenya hard by creating more intense droughts and floods in many parts if the country forest cover is not restored to the required levels. The Green Bicycle project was born in Tokyo where Kalua had gone to visit a few years ago. There he met Hiroshi Kurokawa the Chairman of the Japan Bicycle Foundation.

The organisation receives bicycle donations from wealthy Japanese, refurbishes them and ships them to other Asian countries to help rural people reach schools and health care centers. “I requested them to include Kenya in their list. They had never shipped any bikes to Africa but they accepted,” recalls Kalua.

On average each refurbished bicycle costs Sh12,000 in Japanese terms, including the costs of shipping. According to the Japanese Ambassador, bicycles are highly valued in Japan as an environmentally- friendly way of transport but lamented that in Kenya, they are looked down upon as “a poor man’s Mercedes Benz”.

“I hope Kenyans will change their attitudes and embrace bicycles as a mode of transport in cities. I look forward for the day when Japanese bicycles will be more than Japanese cars in Kenya,” he says. But Kalua laments that the project is facing risks from the customs officials who take too long to clear the bicycles, making storage charges to soar. .

“We were forced to pay Sh1.2 million for the storage of the latest batch of bicycles, We find that a big burden since this project is mean t to be humanitarian,” he says